People's Armed Police

(831 words)

Organized and run along military lines, the People's Armed Police (PAP, renmin wuzhuang jingcha budui) emerged in the post-Mao era as an increasingly important safeguard of party rule. Its birth may be traced to the CCP Politburo's decision, in April 1950, to abolish the four so-called "field armies" which had brought the Communists to power, and to re-organize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a regular army of national defense and a domestic public security force. Two years later, the PLA Public Security Force (Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun gong'an budui), as it was first call…